Hetty Jane Dunaway

Hetty Jane Dunaway Sewell (August 20, 1870 – December 12, 1961) was an American actress, monologuist, philanthropist and the creator of the Dunaway Gardens in rural Georgia.

Early life Dunaway was born in Conway, Arkansas, the daughter of John D. Dunaway and Emma Frances Blackwood Dunaway. Her father was a veteran of the Confederate States Army in the American Civil War, wounded at Murfreesboro. She attended the University of Kansas and the Curry School of Expression in Boston.

Career Dunaway had a popular monologue and musical comedy act on the Chautauqua circuit. She was perhaps best known for her performances of The Lady of the Decoration, a story set in Japan, which she performed for passengers on a train from Kansas City to Los Angeles in 1913, hired by the Santa Fe Railway Company. She wrote plays including The Flapper Grandmother (1924), Cupid Up to Date (1927), Mrs. and Mr. Polly Tickk (1927), What Do the People Want? (1927), and The Little Stranger (1929), and songs, including "When You're Waltzing with the One You Love" (1959).

Dunaway spent eighteen years overseeing construction of Dunaway Gardens, a "theater-garden" on her husband's family's former plantation in rural Georgia. It included twelve spring-fed pools, a waterfall, sunken and hanging gardens, lodgings and a tea room. Minnie Pearl was one of the instructors. Dunaway herself was said to always dress well as if she was always about to appear on the stage. They lived on his family's property near Roscoe, Georgia. Dunaway died in 1961, aged 91 years, in Newnan, Georgia.

After her death, the Dunaway Gardens closed, and deteriorated under an overgrowth of kudzu, until it was purchased in 2000, restored and reopened in 2003. The site is open for tourists, hosts weddings and other events, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.